Mental Health & Wellbeing Statement
Mental health is defined as a state of wellbeing in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.
At Greasby Infant School, we take a whole-school approach to promoting positive mental health and well-being by helping the children to become more resilient, happy and successful individuals and to work in a pro-active way to avoid difficulties arising.
- Ensuring that mental health and wellbeing is an integral part of our school ethos.
- Creating and applying consistent policies and behaviours that support mental health and resilience, and which everyone understands.
- Helping children to develop social relationships, support each other and seek help when they need it.
- Promoting self-esteem and ensuring children understand their importance in the World.
- Helping children to be resilient learners and to manage setbacks.
- Teaching children social and emotional skills and an awareness of mental health.
- Identifying children who have mental health challenges and planning support to meet their needs, including working with specialist services, parents and carers.
- Supporting and training staff to develop their skills and their own resilience.
- Developing a positive, nurturing and open culture where it’s normal to talk about mental health.
Over the course of their education, children spend over 7,800 hours at school. With such a huge amount of time spent in the classroom, our school provides an ideal environment for promoting good emotional wellbeing and identifying early behaviour changes and signs of mental distress. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom can help them to build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their mental health throughout their lives.
Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Evidence shows that mental health and wellbeing programmes in schools can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health and social and emotional skills. Well-being provision in schools can also lead to reductions in classroom misbehaviour and bullying.
Promotion of Positive Mental Health and Well-Being
At Greasby Infant School, we offer pupils many opportunities to do physical and relaxing activities to promote positive well-being.
These include:
- Active play sessions at breaktimes
- Thumbs Up sessions building positive social skills and developing calming strategies
- RockSteady Sessions
- Jigsaw Programme
- Cosmic Yoga Activities
- Mental Health Week
- Themed Days
- Charity Days
- Educational day visits
- Before and After school clubs
Celebrate Success
We believe that promoting the many successes that our children achieve on a day to day basis supports them in boosting their own level of confidence and self-esteem and leads to them building positive mental health and well-being.
In our school, this includes:
- Using Tapestry to celebrate what is taking place.
- Positive behaviour system
- Displaying pupil’s work
- Celebration assembly
- Pupil concerts and performances
- Lunchtime awards
- Head Teacher awards
- Class Assemblies
- Newsletters
Teaching about Mental Health and Wellbeing
At Greasby Infant School, as well as embedding positive mental health and well-being teaching and learning throughout the curriculum and ethos of our school, there are specific interventions that take place with children and their families to support their positive emotional development.
These include:
- Thumbs Up
- Flourish
- Time to Talk
- Jigsaw
- Timid to Tiger Parenting Programme
- Lego therapy
- CAMHS